


all's fair (in love and war)

by sweetwatersong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comrades in Arms, F/M, Gen, Immortality, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:38:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4146801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is what you fight for. This is what you yearn to feel: this moment, this passing of every second, this rush of life and the indomitable strength of the present.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Thor is a warrior, born and bred, and he is glad of any battle - and yet, as with all things, even this can change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all's fair (in love and war)

The sun is setting on another battleground where you have reigned victorious, laying waste to the enemy as your teammates followed suit. In the aftermath's red glow the rush of battle still flows through your veins, turning every beat of your heart into a triumphant and thunderous rhythm. _Alive_ , it tells you as you scour the alien dead for survivors; _alive_ , as you see the Widow watching you knowingly from her own vantage point on the upheaved ground.

This is what you fight for. This is what you yearn to feel: this moment, this passing of every second, this rush of life and the indomitable strength of the present. Without it life stretches before you as an endless road you must walk along, whether anyone would join you or not. 

This, her crooked and razor sharp smile says, is what you fight for: to find an anchor in the endless flow of time. To feel alive.

Natasha flicks her knife, casting off the thick blood still clinging to the blade, and tucks it into a sheath as she turns. The sway of her hips when she walks across the stained and ruined landscape does not match the tightness in her shoulders.

You do not need to tell her that she is right.

 

  


For centuries you have engaged in battle and waged wars against foes uncountable and unthinkable. You have fought in order to breathe, to be reminded that life is precious and can be taken from you at any moment. But here and now, on this strange little world so sure of itself and so naive about the enormity of space, you find something far more unexpected. Perhaps the best word for it is _absolution_.

Here, beside friends as strange as the stars you have wandered through, you find that each conflict is fought grimly and savagely. It is not without joy, true, but for all that it does not hold the same shining brightness as it has in your many years gone by. Once you courted war; now you contend with it, picking only those fights that must be waged, must be won for the good of these people.

You do not notice the change until you stand at the edges of a shrieking maelstrom and find yourself inexplicably and incredibly _tired_. You are weary of this endless attrition, of the jarring repetition of battles won and lost and brokenly tied, littered with the pieces of your comrades and this planet and your pride. War holds no more allure for you, no more promise, and you do not understand why.

The Captain catches your expression as he tugs his shield back onto his arm, bleeding from a myriad number of surface wounds. He is strong, this man, but he is still mortal, and these enemies you face could end his life in a moment. Yet he stands up to them, to each and every threat, refusing at any turn to back down. In this moment, as the screaming winds quiet and you are caught in the center of the storm, you realize he has never looked at war as anything other than a means to protect his people and his friends.

The same exhaustion now in your heart has always been in his.

You call down the lightning, embracing the crackle of singed air and the cool weight of your hammer in your hand, and cast this nightmare to the far ends of the winds.

 

  


The difference is Jane. Watching her argue with Tony over some minute detail in schematics and semantics, you understand at last that this change has come from her strength and spirit. Unaware of your revelation she gives the Man of Iron an incredulous look, clearly unimpressed by his quick counters, and gestures to the plans with the fine-boned hands you love so much, graceful and quick and strong in a way your own have never been. It brings you a contentment and a joy you do not recognize without the roar of armies or the clash of weapons, the rich iron of spilled blood and the heady scent of mead. It is her, you realize, as her eyes flash and her hair continues escaping her hastily made ponytail. It is Jane, so very dear to you and so very much alive.

You need not seek out an anchor in time anymore, for you have already found her.

Races have sprung up under the passing of your gaze and died as quickly, fading without notice but for what challenge they could present you. There will be races more down your long road. Indeed, some day you will stand on an Earth that no longer recognizes the heroes it worships today, the warriors who stand beside you. Some day your beloved Jane will glimmer and fade like her own beloved stars; in time her very bones will be dust in the wind. And yet the time of mortals is ever _now_ , ever the present; they live and flare and die in but a handful of your years, and even so they burn so brightly in so short a time. 

In this place, in this time, Jane holds you to that brilliant flame. She fills your heart with a lightness that will not tolerate the slow sleep of the immortals and you welcome the weight of these ties as you have welcomed none before.

It is her. For now, for as long as she lives, it will be always her.

You rejoice in that knowledge, in being alive, and in this moment war is naught but a shadow on your thoughts.


End file.
